MANILA -- Despite the coronavirus pandemic, this has been a busy year for camera giant Fuji.
Earlier this year, Fuji released the XF100v and many are awaiting the X-T4, the newest update to its top-of-the-line X-T series.
But more immediate, Fuji has recently released the X-T200, the follow-up to the X-T100 targeted at beginners and those transitioning from smartphone photography.
It seems that Fuji has taken strides to improve last year’s X-T100 by bringing in features from its more advanced and more expensive siblings. This can be seen in its video features as the camera is clearly positioned as a vloggers camera.
Coming in at very light 370 grams with the battery and a lightweight XC lens installed, it’s very handy to carry around.
The camera has a Hi-Res OLED screen visible even under direct sunlight. The screen can rotate 360 degrees so it’s perfect to mount on a gorilla pod so you can see yourself while talking to the camera. Besides that, the camera’s separate stereo jack enables users to connect an external microphone for clearer audio.
However, for the video content creator, the feature that’s most noteworthy is the digital gimbal. While not as smooth as the In Body Internal Stabilization (IBIS) of the X-H1, the X-T200 shoots at 6K and downscales the stabilized footage to 4K with the help of onboard software and the camera’s internal gyroscopic sensors. The handheld results are good enough to remove the jitters off a walkthrough, though a real gimbal is still recommended.
With regards to stills, the improved 24MP sensor is 3.5 times faster than the old one.
There has been some thought that went into upgrading the user experience when navigating the cameras features. A lot of the controls are now touch- and swipe-activated. For example, users can touch any of the 425 AF points to use them. For video creators, you can trim videos on the camera to reduce upload times and file sizes on the fly.
Fuji’s Camera Simulation and filters have been retained. A key feature with this is that you can do a split-screen comparison between the current one and previewed others.
The X-T200 is clearly aimed for a new breed of content creators. For those who want to go beyond camera phone video production, the Fujifilm X-T200 is an affordable camera that’s a great upgrade to more professional equipment.
The Fujifilm X-T200 is available in dark silver, silver, and champagne gold with an SRP of P45,990 and is now available at your favorite online retailers.
news.abs-cbn.com
MANILA - When Asus unveiled the Zenfone 5 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February, the Taiwanese tech company raised a lot of eyebrows because of the device’s striking similarity to Apple's iPhone X.
But when Asus formally launched the Zenfone 5 series last April 14 in Manila, people were no longer talking about its nod to the "notch," which has since appeared on phones by rivals Huawei, Oppo and Vivo.
At its local launch, the Zenfone 5 sold out in just 45 minutes, underscoring the lure of its design and specifications at a starting price of P19,995.
DESIGN
The Zenfone 5 has a beautiful metal and glass build. On the front there's a 6.2-inch "edge to edge" screen that's bright and sharp even in daylight.
Like a lot of high end phones being released this year, the Zenfone 5 ditches the familiar 16:9 HDTV screen standard for a sleeker 19:9 aspect ratio.
Asus said this narrower design allowed them to pack more screen real estate without making the unit too large and unwieldy. The switch to a narrower 19:9 ratio also made the new Zenfone a lot easier to hold and operate with one hand.
On top of the screen is the infamous notch, which Asus claims is 26 percent smaller compared to the iPhone X. The notch houses the 8MP front camera with an F2.0 aperture lens, as well as the sensor for the "Face Unlock" feature.
Asus also put a lot of thought into the design of the phone's back, which dazzles when it catches light, regardless of the color option (black or blue).
Unfortunately, like other phones that use a glass back, it’s also a magnet for fingerprints and smudges. You will need a case or cover for this phone.
The back features the phone's two main cameras and a fingerprint scanner. Yes, while the Zenfone 5 has Face Unlock, it still includes a fingerprint reader at the back.
The 12MP main shooter uses a F1.8 aperture lens with a focal length equivalent to a 24mm lens on a DSLR. It provides a nice flat field of view.
The 8MP second camera meanwhile uses an F2.0 aperture lens, with an equivalent DSLR focal length of 12mm that allows a wide-angle view for landscapes and tight indoor shots.
On the right side of the phone are the power button and volume controls. The left side houses the simcard tray.
Like in the other offerings of Asus, you can opt to install two sims on the Zenfone 5, or use the extra sim slot for a microSD card for extra storage.
At the bottom of the phone is a USB-C port for charging and data transfers and a 3.5mm audio jack for people who don’t want to switch to wireless earbuds.
SPECS
Despite its impressive design and build, the Zenfone 5 is not Asus' flagship as it uses the Snapdragon 636 chipset, which is meant for mid-range phones. Its RAM options start at 4 GB and tops out at 6 GB, which was top-of-the line up to 2 years ago, but is just mid-tier now.
Storage also tops out at 64GB, which is adequate for most users, but is just mid-tier with the present crop of phones with double or quadruple the on-board storage. But since it can accept a microSD card with a capacity of up to 2TB, power users always have the option to add more memory.
Asus’ flagship is the Zenfone 5z, which will be released in June. It will use Qualcomm's top of the line Snapdragon 845 chipset, up to 256 GB of storage and 8GB of RAM.
But other than chipset, RAM and storage, the Zenfone 5 and the 5z are similar in all other respects - the cameras, screen, build are the same for both models. And unless you really need to do some serious video editing or gaming on your phone, the specs are more than adequate for everyday apps.
USER EXPERIENCE
Asus has thankfully refrained from its past practice of putting a lot of bloatware into the Zenfone 5. Aside from Android’s standard Google apps and a few of Asus' own apps, which were neatly stored in folders, the only other apps installed in our review unit were Facebook and Instagram, which people will likely install anyway. The cleaner ZenUI interface also complements the sharp bright and nearly bezel-less screen.
Face unlock worked well and was surprisingly not awkward to use at all. But you need to hold the phone correctly to your face. If you hold it at too low an angle, it won’t recognize you. The fingerprint scanner at the back meanwhile worked flawlessly.
If you like watching YouTube videos and HD movies on your phone, you will be glad to know that the notch doesn’t become an annoyance when viewing full screen videos thanks to the phone’s 19:9 aspect ratio. You don’t have to get OCD with the notch covering parts of a video here.
Despite its midrange chipset, it wasn’t a laggard either when it came to gaming. The first person zombie shooting game Dead Trigger loaded pretty quickly and played flawlessly on the Zenfone 5. Sound was pretty decent too. If you need extra performance for more demanding apps, a feature called Boost can add oomph when it’s needed.
The phone’s 3300 mAh battery was more than enough for a day’s use, sans gaming. But if you’re concerned about battery life, a feature called PowerMaster can turn off non-essential apps that drain your battery.
Asus also says that its AI Charging helps reduce battery wear when you charge your phone overnight.
Experts advise keeping your battery charged between 20 to 80 percent of capacity to prolong battery life. Charging your phone overnight meanwhile strains the battery by keeping it at 100 percent for a prolonged time.
Asus says the Zenfone 5’s AI can detect your activity patterns, know when you’re about to sleep, and keeps the phone charged up to only 80 percent until you wake up.
AI or artificial intelligence has become the latest gimmick in smartphones, with every major manufacturer making a claim about AI features. Asus is no different and boasts that the Zenfone 5 has a chock full of AI, especially in its camera system. But we will leave the review of the Zenfone 5’s camera in another article.
Suffice to say, after using it for a week as a daily driver, the Zenfone 5 is a solid all rounder.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
MANILA - Huawei's Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro are like identical twins who grew apart. They share the same core, but on the surface, they differ in sometimes head-scratching ways.
Both pack two of the Chinese electronics giant's strongest selling points in a reflective glass shell - a 4,000 mAh battery that outlasts most flagships and Leica-engineered dual cameras that produce rich colors and detail.
Huawei's in-house Kirin 970 provides the brains for the twin devices. The chip's dedicated artificial intelligence unit functions without storing information in the cloud, making machine learning faster.
Such computer-speak translates into real world usage when the camera instantly recognizes subjects such as food and night scenes and automatically adjusts the settings.
The vanilla Mate 10 is the less attractive of the twins. The fat one, whose 16:9 LCD screen seems left behind by this year's tall display trend. It's front-mounted fingerprint sensor makes it look like a wide Galaxy phone from 2015 and is not water resistant.
But the regular 10's QHD resolution is bright and sharp and is more pleasing to the eye compared to its Pro brother, whose resolution is a notch lower at Full HD+.
While dialing down the resolution could save battery, Huawei should have given users the QHD option, like Samsung did with this year's S8 and Note 8. We ran the regular Mate 10 on QHD and still had enough juice for nearly 2 days.
Screen aside, the Pro is more ergonomic. The fingerprint sensor is located on the back where your index finger would normally rest. The tall display also makes it easier to use with one hand, something that's impossible with the vanilla version.
Both phones' displays measure 6 inches diagonally, but the wider 10 looks much bigger. The Pro's panel feels like using an iPhone Plus, but with extra space at the bottom for those unnecessarily long Instagram captions.
The Pro, unlike the regular variant, is also water-resistant, something that should be standard for flagship devices. Think of it as built-in accident insurance against water damage.
Huawei's EMUI skin is not the prettiest of Android overlays. The inconsistent fonts and colors on the notification shade are eyesores and the rounded corners of the prompts that pop up from the bottom of the device don't blend with the square Android aesthetic.
Too bad because it is one of the first devices to run Android Oreo out of the box.
Every time you delete a picture, the device will remind you that it won't disappear completely until after 30 days. Once is enough. If users missed a button or they have to drill down the settings to get rid of that prompt, something needs to be fixed.
Thankfully, the clunky interface nearly disappears with the speed of the device. The Kirin 970 shows no mercy for transition animations and the 10 did not lag in the 2 weeks that we tested it.
We struggled to max out the battery in our tests. With the screen on the 10 set to QHD, constant messaging app alerts, Spotify, YouTube and iFlix, we got a day and a half on work days.
Minus work communications, the Mate's battery lasted the entire weekend. Something only the iPhone 8 Plus could challenge.
The camera captures deep reds and greens, too vivid at times that some detail gets buried but it's not necessarily bad. It also takes the brightest images in low light. See samples from our first take here.
The controls can be overwhelming, but properly sorted. A swipe from the left calls out the shooting modes, the settings from the right and manual controls from the bottom.
It takes some thumb acrobatics to press the selfie camera switcher, located on the top right corner. Samsung has it worse, on the top left, where only your other hand can reach it.
Casual photographers will find the pre-set modes handy. Monochrome makes mundane subjects like street signs pop, night shot illuminates portions of the shot that would otherwise be dim in auto mode and light painting simulates long exposure.
The Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro would make a potent challenger to the iPhone X and Galaxy Note 8 if Huawei made just one Mate for 2017 without compromising on features.
Both offer fast performance, AI smarts and one of the best smartphone cameras around, but one is hobbled by the lack of water resistance, and the other, by a screen that is not as sharp as the competition.
It will boil down to how much you are willing to pay. The regular 10 retails for P32,990 while the Pro sells for P38,990.
While the Mate 10 Pro is among the priciest Huawei phones available locally to date, it is still priced considerably lower than the P64,490 iPhone X and the P49,990 Galaxy Note 8.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
MANILA - Apple offers its best camera, screen and software yet on the iPhone X, but in a very expensive shell that feels small and unfinished compared to the Android competition.
California-based Apple likes to market its products with consumer-accessible terms that hide the fact that the competition has been offering it for years, and the tenth anniversary iPhone is no different.
The "super retina" display is actually OLED, the same technology used in Samsung's Galaxy and Note lines. But this doesn't mean that the screen is no less vibrant.
The deeper reds and blacks are immediately noticeable on the X if you're coming from an older iPhone. Text is also sharper and the screen is brighter, even at under 50 percent brightness.
On paper, the near bezel-less 5.8-inch screen is larger than the 5.5-inch iPhone Plus line, but it seems smaller because most content shot on 16:9 get cropped on the X's slimmer and taller screen with a 18:9 aspect ratio.
It's a change that brings to mind the jump from the iPhone 4s to the taller 5, the first iPhone Apple released after the death of its visionary founder, Steve Jobs.
The X is bigger than the 8, but is dwarfed by the Galaxy S8 Plus, the Galaxy Note 8, even Google's Pixel 2 XL.
WHAT'S IT LIKE TO USE
The biggest change comes when you try to exit an app. Without the home button, a trademark feature since the first iPhone in 2007, users need to swipe up from the bottom of the screen to call up the home screen.
A swipe to the right on the bottom of the screen activates the app switcher. This used to require a quick double tap of the home button.
A swipe down from the top right summons the control center with WiFi, Bluetooth, mobile data and music controls while a swipe down from the left brings back the lock screen with notifications.
The purely swipe-based interface is jarring at first, but it's not that hard to get used to. It's actually similar to the ill-fated Blackberry 10 operating system.
The notch on the top of the screen, which houses the front facing camera and face-mapping sensors, is polarizing. You get used to it after a while but becomes a nuisance when watching videos on landscape, like the Avengers: Infinity War trailer.
Face ID was spotty in our tests. It worked in good lighting, even with eyeglasses on, but not in the dark, or when lying in bed.
The novelty of the animoji, where on-screen animations mimic the user's facial expressions, disappears quickly, much like the live messaging feature on the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.
The camera is the best yet on the iPhone producing images with vivid colors while sticking close to the subject, unlike Samsung cameras that tend to oversaturate colors.
The simulated lighting effects on portrait mode are clearly in beta and in our tests didn't work well when the lighting was either too bright or too dark. The feature is available on both the front and back cameras on the X.
Battery life is better that the non-plus iPhone, enough to last the entire the day with moderate to heavy usage, but definitely not at par with the Plus variant.
CONCLUSION
The iPhone X is a big leap in design and features compared to the & line.
It has a gorgeous screen, unlocks with a glance, charges wirelessly and takes professional-looking photos.
But these features have been available for years on Google-powered phones. And with Chinese manufacturers cramming the most features at the lowest possible price, the X's asking price of P64,490 seems outrageous.
The price, however, will not be much of a concern for Apple fans, as grey market units have sold for P90,000 ahead of the official Philippine release on Friday.
At P51,490 for the 64GB model, the iPhone 8 Plus packs the same technology and with the familiar home button and appears to be the smarter upgrade if you are deep in the iOS ecosystem.
The iPhone 7 Plus, which starts at P42,990 is an even better buy if you can live with last year's technology.
Apple is reportedly planning a bigger iPhone X successor in 2018, which will hopefully see a better placement of the front sensors and more intuitive swipe gestures.
In many ways, the iPhone X feels like a device to tide people over until Apple finds a way to cram all its a tech in a larger body. But that will also likely supersize the price.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
MANILA - Chinese electronics giant Huawei serves up its Mate 10 with forward-looking tech in a glass body that's somewhat left behind by 2017 design trends.
The LCD screen is bright and pin sharp, especially when set to QHD instead of Full HD, the default setting out of the box.
While it looks physically bigger, images displayed on the Mate 10's 6-inch 16:9 screen seem bigger compared to similarly-sized 18:9 screens because most content, which come in 16:9, are not cropped.
The super-reflective back is a fingerprint magnet but the bundled case tames the sheen and gives the device a nice grip. A protective film is pre-installed on the screen, but it scratches easily.
The device is powered by Huawei's own Kirin 970 processor with built-in artificial intelligence, meaning the AI function is done on the device instead of on the cloud.
The two standout features are the dual Leica lens on the back, this time accentuated by a stripe, and the battery, which at 4,000 mAh can last up to 2 days in our initial test.
The cameras, which combine standard and monochrome images, produce rich colors and detail. The images are bright, sometimes more so than the scene itself.
The built-in AI also means the camera recognizes plants, pets, food and
buildings and adjusts the settings even before you press the shutter.
It's pretty accurate, although when I zoomed into the lettuce leaves in
my salad, it recognized it as as plant instead of food. See the leaf
icon in the lower right corner of the screenshot below.
The Mate 10 is available in stores at P32,990, or half the price of the
Apple iPhone X, and nearly P20,000 less than the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
